BALI Registered Designer Kate Gould building garden for SGF
Kate Gould Gardens will join close to 30 other award-winning designers from around the world to compete at Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) 2018. In its seventh edition, the biennial event has established itself as a premier tropical garden and flower show, where garden and floral designers with at least one top accolade in the recent two to three years are invited to participate.
This will be the first time KGG will be competing in the SGF Competition. Kate Gould Gardens design and build award-winning gardens. With over 20 years of experience as a garden designer Kate Gould has led this dynamic team with a wide variety of specialist skills to achieve the highest accolades in the landscape industry. They are regular exhibitors at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and have been awarded numerous gold medals as well as the coveted ‘Best in Category’ at Chelsea on three occasions.
KGG specialise in gardens from design to completion, where their passion for greening the urban environment can be explored to the full. These intimate and well thought out urban gardens often catch the attention of the media and have been featured in various publications in the UK and internationally. On larger scale projects the KGG designer’s vast knowledge and love of plants can be more fully explored to produce beautiful planting schemes that work all year round.
“The team and I feel very honoured to have been invited to take part in this year’s SGF. We had never visited the city until our recce trip in February of this year. We met our implementing partner ISS Hydroculture as well as the team organising the show. Myself and Keith Chapman MBE, our project manager, were enthralled with the Gardens by the Bay and seeing the space we were going to be constructing the garden in really made the show come to life. It has been exciting both researching the available tropical plants and designing an urban garden with trees, shrubs and flowering plants for a completely different climate to the UK. The chance to design with this treasure trove of variety has made this project a total joy to work on.” - Kate Gould, designer and director.
The garden is called ‘Urban Lifestyle’ and is intended for use by a community, living in surrounding apartment blocks. The residents have no access to their own private gardens but can garden here as a community. Showcasing a range of stacked together cubed planters to form much of the structure allows each planter to be gardened individually as and when time allows.
Separate seating areas provide the residents with relaxing spaces. One area, over a calm pool is covered by a lightweight pergola which shields people using the garden from windows and balconies above, offering privacy and shade.
Materials take their reference from the assumed building and are intended to be sturdy for year-round use and longevity. The use of reflective and textured materials adds drama as well as helping to create lighter areas within a foliage rich planting palette with an emphasis on leaves rather than large areas of flowers.
SGF 2018 – bringing together globally recognised names for a floral extravaganza Happening at Gardens by the Bay from 21 July to 3 August, SGF 2018 will gather top international designers for three star components – Landscape Gardens, Fantasy Gardens, and Floral Windows to the World.
As anchor displays, the Fantasy and Landscape Gardens will bring together celebrated luminaries from 11 countries for a showcase of creativity and horticulture excellence in 80 sqm show gardens. Separately, Floral Windows to the World will feature colourful and vibrant floral masterpieces complemented with stunning set design and lighting, by notable floral artists from around the world. For each competition, judges can hand out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals with the overall winner being awarded the “Best of Show” title.
As an international flower show, SGF 2018 will feature the new ASEAN Garden, a special feature to mark Singapore’s chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year. This non-competitive display will comprise a myriad of colourful blossoms symbolic of Southeast Asian nations, including lotuses, hibiscuses and orchids.
Another crowd favourite, the Orchid Extravaganza will place a spotlight on the world’s largest family of flowering plants and one of the most important plant groups in the international horticulture industry. The Secret Garden of Edibles will also allow visitors to enjoy a sensory experience with fruits and vegetables from temperate climates.
SGF blossoms into a stable of three signature shows
Having established itself as a premier garden show since it was first launched in 2006, the SGF brand will grow into three complementary flower and horticulture shows – SGF Orchid Show and SGF Horticulture Show – an indication of the Festival’s popularity amongst Singaporeans, international visitors and industry professionals.
The SGF Orchid Show, a partnership between Singapore’s National Parks Board (NParks) and the Orchid Society of Southeast Asia, will acquaint visitors with this family of flowers through talks and demonstrations, orchid landscape displays and award-winning orchid plants. With its first show in April 2018, the SGF Orchid Show will prime Singapore to play its role as a host for the Asia Pacific Orchid Conference in 2022.
In early 2019, SGF Horticulture Show will have its first run, an opportunity for Singapore-based industry partners and students to showcase their expertise in areas like landscape design, horticulture skills such as growing and cultivating plants, and skyrise greenery. During the show period, Singapore will welcome delegates of the 7th International Symposium on the Taxonomy of Cultivated Plants.
SGF is jointly organised by NParks and Gardens by the Bay. For more information, please visit www.singaporegardenfestival.com